The Q....Day 9

8:08 am - Mountain Time - Saturday - 33º F (feels like 27º F), humidity 65%, wind 6 mph out of the north........clear blue skies from horizon to horizon......the wind is gone once again!  Got down to 43º F inside the Newell early this morning.  Forecast high 62º F.....above 60 again!

Friday the winds came......not horrible winds, but steady winds in the high 20's for about 7 hours out of the north......those north winds can be soooo chilly!  When the winds blow out here in the desert TLE prefers to stay inside as they reek havoc with her allergies and sinuses.  I on the other hand spent time outside cleaning the windshield, and beginning to straighten up our trailer as we will be pulling anchor this coming Sunday morning for Parker.

We began our 9th day in Quartzite with our batteries sitting at 86%.  As I have been doing these past few days with the overnight temps in the low 30's, I switched on all three Suburban gas heaters, then turned on the big generator (7.5 kilowatts), and then the two electric heaters.....we rocked 5 heaters for about 30 minutes getting interior to a more hospitable climate conducive to human life.  I had noticed the day before that the satellite dish casts a shadow on one of the solar panels for about 2 hours first thing in the morning, and you do not want shadows on your solar panels, so Friday morning I cranked it down (didn't change the compass setting, just lowered it) about 16 cranks to get the shadow off the panel.  The result was we hit 100% on the batteries by 1 pm.  Why is that you might be asking yourself?  Anything that block the sun's rays from covering all the cells on the entire panel essentially nullifies that panel's output, and slows down the charging process.  Removing that shadow allows all four panels to slam electrons back into our house batteries and get us back to the coveted 100% earlier in the afternoon.

Since there was not much else to do outside I spent time reading and napping (I had a sleepless stretch during the night), and then around 3 pm I (by myself) got in the VW and ran some errands......I needed to mail a letter at the local PO, and I was out of stamps.....drat!  This time of year the line at the Quartzite USPS is out the door most days, and for wont of a first class stamp I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes.....needless to say I bought $10 (well, $9.80) of stamps so I won't have to wait in line for a long time to come.

I next stopped off at the store (Quartzite General Store) to pick up some grocery items for TLE (Jack cheese, Squirt, sour cream, cilantro).....TLE had advised earlier that chicken enchiladas were on the menu and these items (minus the Squirt.....that is an adult beverage mixer) were needed.  As I have written previously, this store is well stocked.....TLE didn't think I would find cilantro, but I had a feeling I would.  In all I was gone just shy of an hour........

.....TLE began preparing the chicken enchiladas upon my return and by 5:30 pm I was in enchilada heaven.....I chased them with a pint of Great Basin Cerveza Chilebeso.....a perfect pairing if I do say so myself!

We watched the final episode of season 1 for 'The Crown' (season 2 is not yet available on Netflix) and then watched the first episode of 'Sherlock' before heading for slumberland. Both of these excellent series were recommended by Facebook friends back in December when we were trying to figure out what to 'binge watch' over New Years.  We settled then on 'Breaking Bad', but now we have moved on to the other recommendations and love both of these new to us series.

We were in bed by 11:20 pm.....the temp in the bedroom was already down to 61º F......thanks for stopping by!